These champions for the most
part have been preachers, lawyers, and hired agents. Between these and
the mass of mankind there is a want of approachability, if the term be
admissible, partially, at least, fatal to their success. They are
supposed to have no sympathy of feeling or interest with those very
persons whom it is their object to convince and persuade.
And again, it is so common and so easy to ascribe motives to men of these
classes other than those they profess to act upon. The preacher, it is
said, advocates temperance because he is a fanatic, and desires a union
of the Church and State; the lawyer from his pride and vanity of hearing
himself speak; and the hired agent for his salary. But when one who has
long been known as a victim of intemperance bursts the fetters that have
bound him, and appears before his neighbors "clothed and in his right
mind," a redeemed specimen of long-lost humanity, and stands up, with
tears of joy trembling in his eyes, to tell of the miseries once endured,
now to be endured no more forever; of his once naked and starving
children, now clad and fed comfortably; of a wife long weighed down with
woe, weeping, and a broken heart, now restored to health, happiness, and
a renewed affection; and how easily it is all done, once it is resolved
to be done; how simple his language! there is a logic and an eloquence in
it that few with human feelings can resist.
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